green the globe sneak peak

Check it out! We're all set up and ready to 'Green The Globe' at the Powerkidz festival, starting tomorrow.

Isn't this globe wonderful!??! Brendan from the Brisbane Powerhouse created this li'l puppy out of lightweight wood and chicken wire, gave it a coating with paper mache and hoisted it up from the roof. So today when I came in there were just the finishing coats and touch ups left to do on the globe, and some prep for the interactive workshop component with the kids.

The next 3 days will be spent amongst a frenzy of children, environmental conservation messages, drawing, pasting and spinning around the globe!

peacock play

I've been playing around with a few design ideas for my upcoming tattoo on my inner right forearm. I'm visually obsessed with peacock feathers and more recently, diamonds (as a representation of strength and clarity).

I admit I like bits from all of the designs ~ but just when I think 'That's it!', I get another idea and it keeps morphing and growing. At this rate I'll end up with a portfolio of feathery designs and no tattoo! Argh! Any thoughts?

paperclay workshop with Graham Hay

Graham Hay : 'Stirred'

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Graham Hay : 'SPIN'

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Graham Hay : 'PLANTED'
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Graham Hay : 'NET II'
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So the beautiful works you see above are straight off the Graham Hay website. Graham is a pioneer PAPERCLAY artist who creates phenomenal works, using incredibly leading-edge and innovative techniques he has invented ~ and happily passes onto participants in his workshops!

Luckily for me, I spent this past 2 glorious days attending one of Graham's workshops in Caloundra, QLD. Graham is invited all over the world to share his knowledge in the relatively new (last 20-30 years) medium. Check out his website http://www.grahamhay.com.au/ for more images of his work and a wealth of information and links to paperclay artists all over the world.

Although I don't have much experience at all in working with clay, I can see that paperclay is very different to working with other clays. For one, you can combine dried paperclay objects with wet paperclay ~ which is a no-can-do in the rest of the clay world! No scoring required!

Combining dried & wet paperclay allows for the creation of tall sculptural works which don't topple or buckle. Working with dry paperclay also allows for incredibly strong joints in a short amount of time. The photo below is of a brick 'well', made in less than 5 minutes by combining dry paperclay 'bricks' with paperclay 'slip'.
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We all made a couple of these 'wells' which we stacked to create a paperclay tower ~ all made from dried paperclay bricks and offcuts.

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And the amazing thing is ~ because paperclay is made with cellulose fibres, you can add just about any organic material to it to create texture. You just mix/dip the organic material into the paperclay slip, wait until leather dry and cut and attach it as required! The organic material burns off in the firing process, leaving behind the form and texture of honeycombed sponges, toast or even 2 minute noodles! How cool is that!

If you ever get a chance to attend one of Graham's paperclay workshops, you won't be disappointed! You can see a list of his upcoming workshops here

I'll upload some pics of my own inspired paperclay sculptures soon!

next gig ~ Powerkidz!

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Hi all! With the mural finally complete, it's onto the next project for me! Yippee!!!

Over the school holidays this coming June/July, I'll be working at the Brisbane Powerhouse Powerkidz festival. If you haven't heard of it before, it is an AWESOME, FANTASTIC, SPECTACULAR fortnight long festival celebrating all things creative & kids!
There's anything creative you can imagine kids would LOVE, like Clay animation, Costume Corner, Sing Stars, Flipside Circus & Beats Bus, along with many many more! Many of the programs are free ~ Bonus!!

I'll be undertaking 2 of the visual art programs:

* GREEN THE GLOBE (above) : I'll be working with kids to represent their ideas on environmental conservation and 'doing their bit' to care for our planet. During this 3 day breeze-in-breeze-out workshop, the kids will draw/write their ideas on paper, which will then be glued to a massive hand-built sphere as tall as me. After the 3 days, the sphere, covered in environmental messages, will be hoisted up to the ceiling to become a globe of conservation for the rest of the Powerkidz festival! How cool is that!! (FREE ACTIVITY)
DATES Tue 30 Jun – Thu 2 Jul
TIME 9.30am – 3pm

* POWERKIDS PAINTING WALL: Kids come along with ideas about their family, pets or community and paint them onto a 5 metre long wall of butchers paper. These then are strung up all around the Powerhouse during the festival (FREE ACTIVITY)
DATES Tue 30 Jun – Sat 4 Jul +
Tue 7 – Sat 11 Jul
TIMES 11am + 1.30pm

You can download the full POWERKIDZ workshop guide here

So, if you're in Brisbane and want to come along to this fabulous festival bring ya kids and pop in for a visit!!! Hope to see you there!!!

mural - finito!

How exciting ~ the mural is complete!!

For an action packed movie version of the full length of the River Stories Mural, click above! We've had so much wonderful feedback from the Caboolture community groups, council & local residents; it's wonderful to know all our hard work is welcomed with such open arms. Yippee!!

Here's a couple more snap shots just for good measure. Can you tell I'm excited?!?! It's only a few hours old!!

Before:

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After:

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The happy artists!!

John Hellen, Me, Debbie Taylor

still some to go, but getting there ...!

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It sure is coming along ~ the spaces are filling fast!!

I've really only really shown pics of the River Stories mural progress so far, rather than talking about the little process tricks that have made the process easier and breezier! So here they are:

The more prep work done off-site, the easier and faster the on-site work will be. So before we started painting, I created templates of all of the feature 'fill' designs (such as the bees, platypus, suns etc) by drawing them onto recycled real-estate sign board (I think it's called 'future board') & cutting them out.
So after painting the overall wavy black outline, we've colour coded each section and come through with templates of the corresponding feature designs, drawing them onto the wall using pencil.

After this, it's pretty much a case of 'paint-by-numbers' (or should I say icons)! First I mixed all the colours we'd need in good-sized portions, so I wouldn't need to colour match if we ran out half way through. Basically, I've just added white to all 6 feature colours, creating 12 hues in total.
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If you check out the close up of the pink and red feature above, (I am totally in love with the Red-pink combo!!) you can see that there's a thin light border separating the 2 colours.
We've created this effect by painting all of the red features first, then coming in with the pink paint: leaving about a half a centimetre gap between the colours as we apply.

This creates an effortless 'border' of the original background 'Sandstone' colour, making the features stand out or 'glow' and also link in well with the original Sandstone background throughout. This technique also shaves heaps of time off outlining everything at the end ~ there's no need, it's already done! We've used this same negative border technique throughout the whole mural, with every colour combo.

After we've 'filled' all of the waves with painted pattern colour combos, we'll add in the text and make any touch ups to the line work with black and sandstone paint (I've noticed a few wobbly lines to fix up which I'm a bit obsessed with).

The final stage will be to paint the whole thing with an anti-graffiti shield, which is a fabulous paint product for outdoor murals ~ You just roll it on and it basically means that any 'tags' in the future will then wipe off with a rag & cleaning product, or with a water blaster depending on the brand of the product. It also gives the added bonus of adding a UV layer of protection to the paint, making the colour last longer & fade less.

At this stage, we've still got to paint the lighter blue onto the arches/hills, light purple to the fish/crab/platypus, light pink to the squiggly waves and a few patches of green, hot pink & red here & there. At this rate, all going well, I think we could be finished by the end of next week ~ Yippee!!

process pics

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The more colour that goes on, the more I'm LOVING IT!!! Thought I'd throw in a highly staged pic of me painting the wall, to give you an idea of the size of it. We've got a little stool for shorties like me who can't reach the top!